September has officially begun the hunting season. I hear shots being fired as I write this. Shoot the freeloaders, will you?!

Mary’s finally begun her book! I was beginning to wonder if she’d ever get started on it. I was surprised that she sent 13 sheets of paper at once, though. Didn’t she know there’d be postage due on that? We owed 23¢, not that she isn’t worth the extra cost. Even so, so it doesn’t get to be a hassle for Tom (because he has to wait in line in order to pay and then get the mail), I advised her not to mail more than 10 sheets at once.

Her writing’s getting easier to read, even though she still doesn’t use caps, paragraphs or periods. I can figure out where those are appropriate. That’s part of my job.

I guess from what she tells me, she’ll be sending clips from various parts of her life, jumping around from time to time. I won’t worry, though, about the story’s layout till she’s given me everything she wants to include in the book.

She sent a 6-page letter and 19 pages of memories from when she was 4 years old in 1981 in New York. I can’t believe she can remember such detail at just 4 years old! I’ve only read/typed up the first couple of pages, though, so I can’t get into what it was about yet.

She asked me to change people’s names, but as I explained to her – what if I renamed one of her exes the same name as another ex? So I told her I’d keep a list of all the names as I came across them, making footnotes. Then, if she has a problem with any of the names along the way, she can tell me and I’ll change them again.

I’ll send her about 20 sheets at a time in small manila envelopes, as I type them up, the same way I’m going to send my book to her once she’s out of there.

She says she’ll look at it like her job. She’ll work on the book during the day, then write me, her boyfriend Todd, and her auntie at night.

In her letter she said, “I know your woman is Palma.” So the next clue I gave her was that she’s tall, at least 5” taller than Palma. If she still doesn’t get it, I’ll tell her that omitting Palma and Gibb, she’s already mentioned her name. If she still doesn’t get it, then I’ll tell her something that’ll be a dead giveaway, without it standing out on paper like a sore thumb. And she knows this about Teddy Bear, too. I’ll tell her that she speaks Spanish and German. The reason I know Mary knows this is because Mary knows a little German herself and she told me they’d exchange phrases here and there.

She says she’s getting along really well with her 3 cellies, Teresa did get page 2’d over a letter she wrote, Misha went home after going to GP, white Johnson’s still on 2nd shift, and Laticia’s a snitch, period.

She says she thinks she’ll be free in 04 or 05, but isn’t sure where she’ll be going from there. She’s sure, though, that she’ll be coming to see me. She even mentioned my visiting New York with her. No thanks, I told her!

She said there’s no Ad-Seg in Florida (this surprised me), but that she won’t need it there anyway.

Lastly, she was born on 10/15/77.

This morning I’m going to go with Tom to drop off and then pick up the final batch of bottles. Then - one less thing I gotta do for the freeloaders! We’re also going to pick up some maze and bingo tickets which I vibe a win. As Tom will admit, I have pretty good accuracy with vibing when we’ll win and when we won’t.

I tried this special shampoo that’s supposed to take the frizz out of coarse curly hair, but as I figured, it didn’t help. We just can’t change what we’re cursed with!